Colorado: Where Criminals Come to Stay and Play

By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

The FBI recently released detailed data on more than 14 million criminal offenses from calendar year 2024, reported to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program by participating law enforcement agencies. More than 16,000 state, county, city, university, college, and tribal agencies, covering around 95.6% of the population of the United States, submitted data to the UCR Program through the National Incident-Based Reporting System and the Summary Reporting System.

By overlaying Census Bureau population estimates on the FBI data for individual states and territories, a curious party (like yours truly) can see how many violent or property crimes occur per 100,000 people—and thus see how crime rates vary between states. Because the FBI has been collecting this data since 1986, it is also possible to track how rates have been changing over time.

If you simply focus on totals, which is how the media routinely tracks this sort of data, the number of violent crimes reported in the U.S. so far this century has decreased by 13% from 1,366,375 incidents in 2001 to 1,190,091 in 2024, and the number of property crimes decreased dramatically by 41% from 9,805,793 in 2001 to 5,795,189 in 2024.

The FBI defines a “violent crime” as one involving a homicide, rape, robber or aggravated assault. “Property crimes” are ones involving arson, burglary, larceny-theft or motor vehicle theft.

It is worth noting that the FBI only counts each crime once even if multiple different charges are associated with an individual incident, and the FBI only recognizes the most serious crime in each case. (Except when arson is involved, in which case the FBI counts two crimes.) 

For example, an armed carjacking would only be counted as an aggravated assault in the FBI database and not a vehicle theft. If this incident also resulted in a homicide, it would only be counted as a homicide. So in absolute terms, the FBI database is under-reporting the actual number of criminal charges that occur each year.  

In relative terms, overlaying population data on top of the total FBI counts, violent crimes across the entire United States decreased 27% from 479.5 crimes per 100,000 in 2001 to 349.3 per 100,000 in 2024, and property crimes decreased 51% from 3441.0 per 100,000 in 2001 to 1703.9 per 100,000 in 2024.

Although in Colorado’s case, violent crime rates bucked the national trend and INCREASED by a whopping 52% from 315.5 violent crimes per 100,000 in 2001 to 479.5 per 100,000 in 2024.

And although property crimes decreased by 26% from 3540.6 crimes per 100,000 in 2001 to 2619.4 per 100,000 in 2024, the incidence of property crimes in Colorado remains WELL above the national average.

Accordingly, in 2024, Colorado was ranked the sixth worst region for violent crimes behind only Washington DC, Alaska, New Mexico, Tennessee and Arkansas.

In 2024, Colorado was ranked the third worst region for property crimes behind only Washington DC and New Mexico.

By way of comparison, in 2001 Colorado was ranked #31 for violent crime and #21 for property crime. 

How the mighty have fallen! 

Colorado is not the safe state it once was to build a future and raise a family. This is the legacy the Democrats are leaving Colorado’s shrinking population. 

Mike O’Donnell is a small business advocate, nonprofit executive and economic development leader based in Kirk, Colorado. He currently serves as Executive Director of Prairie Rose Development Corp., a mission-driven lender supporting underserved entrepreneurs across the state.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.